For as long as most remember, Wilcox County High School hasn’t sponsored a prom for its 400 students. Instead, parents and their children organize their own private, off-site parties, known casually as white prom and black prom — a vestige of racial segregation that still lives on.

’40 years of local customs’

Wilcox County High School senior Mareshia Rucker and her friends bucked 40 years of local customs this month by organizing their own integrated prom, a formal dance open to Wilcox County’s white, black, Latino and Asian high school students. Organizers, both black and white, said they lost friends in the process — a grim experience in the waning weeks of the school year. It’s been hard on the rest of their hometown, too.

Why this year? How could they carry out an integrated prom now, but not 1971, 2012, or the decades between? Part of it might be Facebook, students suggested. They’re all friends, and that’s where evidence of limousine rides and slow dances tick across the screen. Some said it was the outside help, the media attention, the voice of the NAACP. The neighbors who paid for car washes, doughnuts of barbecue plates were key, the students agree. So, too, were the parents.

‘No issues’

“When you have people in your county stand with you…it makes everything easier,” said Brandon Davis, a white Wilcox County senior who helped to plan the integrated prom. “When my parents told me, ‘We will stand beside you and support you,’ that was just amazing.”

It seemed like what Mareshia hoped for when they started: “If we’re all together and we love each other the way we say we do, then there are no issues,” she said. “This is something that should have happened a long time ago.”

Do you know other towns that still practice racial segregation? How do we overcome racial boundaries?

Ted Nugent should be arrested. Not because he doesn’t like Barack Obama but because he got up in front of a group of people and insinuated he would attempt to assassinate Obama if he’s re-elected.

Nugent’s words were: “If Barack Obama is elected, I’ll either be dead or in jail this time next year,” which sounds to me like he’s open to directing his disapproval of Obama in a way that is violent and unlawful. When you see that statement next to Nugent comparing Obama and his colleagues to coyotes that needed to be shot, as well as the need to “ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November,” I don’t see how that rant cannot be looked upon as a threat on the president’s life.

I don’t care how you feel about Nugent’s music or Obama’s policies, it seems that if there were a First Amendment line to cross, that would be it. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech but it cannot insulate folks against the social and cultural repercussions that come from saying something offensive.

Obama is hardly the only president to have a U.S. citizen publicly threaten his life. If people don’t like the president, they can say that. They can vote against them. They can run. They can leave. But they shouldn’t be allowed to go on the Internet or radio and threaten his or her life. I felt that way about George W. Bush, I feel that way about President Obama, and I will feel that way if Mitt Romney gets elected. That’s because this conversation isn’t about them or the parties they represent. It’s about maintaining some level of respect for the office. How can we begin to talk seriously about “restoring America”– whatever that means — when we openly threaten the life of our chief ambassador?

I’m not surprised to hear such comments from Nugent. But I am surprised that in a country with 106 million handguns, 105 million rifles, 83 million shotguns and four assassinated presidents, we don’t take such talk more seriously.

How about you, do you think Ted Nugent deserves jail time for threatening Obama’s life? Feel free to voice out your opinions!